Secret Warriors

by Taylor Downing

  In the press, Northcliffe was among those who continued to feel that the war was being run by amateurs, and the criticism began to hurt the government. Then, in the spring of 1915, a major crisis shocked the nation when the press sensationally revealed the shell shortage endured by British forces at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in March. The Daily Mail and The Times were accused of being unpatriotic by reporting failings in the army. Copies of the papers were burned in the street, and their circulations plummeted. But Northcliffe regarded his task as one of ‘awakening’ the British people to the reality of the conflict. He said he intended ‘to continue his policy of criticising the Government till such time as we apply ourselves as scientifically as Germany to carrying on the war’. And he dismissed the loss of sales, saying, ‘Better to lose circulation than to lose the war.’29

  However, it was none other than Sir John French, commander-in-chief of the BEF, who had leaked news of the devastating effects of the shortage to Colonel Repington, The Times military correspondent in London. When it became clear that the rumours were true, the ensuing political crisis led to the collapse of the Liberal government and the formation of the coalition. The circulation of The Times and the Daily Mail quickly recovered and Northcliffe’s personal influence was restored, alongside that of his papers. He was widely credited with bringing down the old government. It was tremendous power for a press baron to yield.

  Moreover, the political upheavals resulted in a change of leadership at the press bureau. Sir Edward Cook and Sir Frank Swettenham, who now took charge, had a more realistic view of the need to inform the press and, through the newspapers, to influence public opinion at home. By now government ministers were beginning to realise that this was not a limited war of short duration. fought between professional armies. Britain was in for the long haul. And there was a growing awareness of the concept of a ‘Home Front’, in which public opinion and morale would play an important role. The French had allowed war correspondents to the front for some time, and Northcliffe demanded to know, ‘If the French, why not the British?’30 Eventually the pressure became so great that the War Office decided to allow five correspondents and a small number of photographers to visit the British lines. Later in the year, the Admiralty too relented, permitting selected reporters to visit the Grand Fleet moored at Scapa Flow. At last the War Office and the Admiralty had finally reversed their prohibition on correspondents reporting from the front.

  One of the first five journalists sent to the front in France was none other than John Buchan. Having been engaged as a writer by The Times and the Daily News, he arrived in time to report on the final stages of the Second Battle of Ypres, in which the Germans had first used gas. Later in the year he sent back reports on the Battle of Loos, when Haig first deployed gas. His reports were well regarded. Leo Amery, a junior minister in the coalition government, wrote to his wife saying that the Times articles were ‘excellent’ and that Buchan ‘can sense a situation quickly and can with the minimum of effort make a vivid story of it’.31 Buchan’s subsequent career, however, revealed how close these early war correspondents were to the military establishment. When Sir Douglas Haig became commander-in-chief of the BEF in December, GHQ asked Buchan to, as it were, switch sides and write official communiqués for the new chief. Haig, a fellow Scot also from the Borders who had attended the same Oxford college, knew Buchan and liked his highly readable but discreet style. Poacher Buchan had no hesitation in turning gamekeeper; indeed he would not even have seen it in these terms. Whether he was working for Haig or The Times, or writing Nelson’s History of the War, he saw his role as to cover the war fairly, honestly and tactfully, and to be read by as many people as possible.

  Buchan was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps and joined GHQ just in time for the start of the Battle of the Somme. He prepared communiqués and wrote weekly summaries of the battle that were sent out by Wellington House to British embassies around the world. Later, he wrote up the full story of the battle not only in Nelson’s History of the War but in two separate volumes also published by Nelsons and simply titled The Battle of the Somme First Phase and Second Phase. Subsidised by Wellington House, these were then translated into Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.32

  The books walk a fine line but are neither simple propaganda nor hard-hitting war reporting. Far from the comic-book approach of the early literature, created when little or no information was forthcoming from the front, they are still a good read today, conveying a first-hand sense of the adventure of war while accurately capturing the landscape of the modern battlefield. They are critical neither of the commander-in-chief nor of the divisional generals who repeatedly sent men in human waves against well-entrenched enemy machine guns. Buchan’s reliance on GHQ to supply casualty figures means that British losses are played down and the Germans’ built up. Nevertheless, after the ignorance of the early stages of the war, by 1916 Buchan had access to much greater information and detail. His books filled a gap in knowledge about what was happening at the front and tried to explain to readers at home and abroad the scale of the British war effort and the nature of the real fighting. The books did not contain outright criticism. That would have to wait until many years after the guns had fallen silent.

  However, by this point of the war, a new, emerging medium would also bring professionals into conflict with the War Office and the authorities. Again, it was the Battle of the Somme that would prove to be the turning point.

  13

  The War in Pictures

  The moving picture or cinematograph had arrived just twenty years before the beginning of the Great War. But a great deal had happened to the medium in the two decades between 1895 and 1914. At first, film had been nothing more than a fairground attraction, a sideshow gimmick where audiences could pay a couple of pennies to see a few minutes’ worth of visual jokes or filmic tricks, local scenes of interest that might feature workers leaving a factory, or a sporting event. But the ten years before the war saw the emergence of something resembling a full-scale cinema industry. Special buildings were constructed where the films could be shown, all of course silent but nearly always with some form of live musical accompaniment. By 1914, it was estimated that there were 4500 film theatres across Britain. And the newer ones were large ‘electric picture palaces’ which the public would enter through marble foyers decked out with palms and floral displays and lined with plush hangings. The new Majestic in Clapham could seat 3000, and by 1917 there were as many as twenty million visits to the cinema every week. Five thousand new films were released every year with many studios producing a film each week, and the industry employed between 80 and 100,000 workers.1

  A process of consolidation had already begun whereby the hundreds of early cinema pioneers merged into a few large companies that had their own trade organisations to represent them. Moreover, the early cinema industry was already an international business. There were cinemas around the world, at least 20,000 in the cities of America and more than 1000 even in Russia, despite its relative poverty. French companies such as Pathé and Gaumont were already beginning to dominate the European production market and were well represented in the British industry, which was centred in the West End of London.

  Cinema itself had been transformed in the years before the war. Films had grown longer and more sophisticated and a grammar of film narrative had developed. From the beginning, there had been two types of film. Fictional films were emerging by 1914 into a substantial art form in themselves. Dramas were popular all over the world, and comedies too were developing internationally – visual gags and slapstick could be enjoyed just as much in Moscow or Bombay as in Manchester or Baltimore. Already some artists were at work who would take narrative films to great heights. D.W. Griffith was about to start production on the cinema’s first great blockbuster, The Birth of a Nation, and help establish a new American industry in Hollywood on the west coast. Charlie Chaplin, the British comedian, had already started working ther
e with Mack Sennett and his Keystone Company and had just created the Tramp, the character that would go on to make him world famous.

  On the other hand, factual films had also developed from simple scenes that showed workers walking past a camera or taking a ride on the top deck of a tram, to impressive feature documentaries that recorded major events such as polar explorations or imperial pageants. In addition, weekly newsreels containing five or six separate stories, known as ‘Topicals’, had been produced and shown for some years. By 1914 there were three principal newsreel companies in Britain: Pathé Gazette, Gaumont Graphic and the Topical Budget. ‘Topicals’ contained a set of stories that might include anything from a royal visit to a few seconds of a football match, from an aviation fair to the launch of a ship. Already the Topical companies had international links, so that film shot in Britain could be seen anywhere around the world, while footage shot abroad of, say, the Russian imperial family or an American cowboy pageant, could also be shown in Britain.2

  Most educated people looked down on film as a vulgar, cheap and mindless form of entertainment for the working classes. But the industry made high claims for itself, calling the cinema ‘the greatest social force in existence’ and claiming that film was capable of ‘satisfying an indispensable human requirement’.3 So when war was declared the young film industry too was keen to do its bit. The cinema trade argued that films could be used to ‘arouse patriotism’, to help recruitment and to keep the public informed with a film record that would show ‘the actual likeness of events’ at the front.4 The trade further asserted that it had the basic production and distribution infrastructure in place to offer access to a worldwide cinema audience. The War Office and the Admiralty responded exactly as they had with the press: they banned all photographers and cinematographers (film cameramen) from going anywhere near the front. The same knee-jerk reaction that barred newspapers from reporting events also prevented the cinema industry from showing any kind of military activity. Any cameraman who ventured within about thirty miles of the front was arrested and faced being shot as a spy.

  The cinema-going public was denied any view of what was happening at the front and instead had to put up with simple recruiting pictures in which portraits of Wellington, Nelson and Gordon of Khartoum would be screened alongside girls in khaki singing patriotic songs and pointing out the location of the nearest recruiting office. By early 1915, however, both the Germans and the French were beginning to allow film cameramen access to the front, and their films were being shown around the world. Film of advancing columns of German infantry, of German generals benevolently patting the heads of little children, or of the Kaiser at the front began to ‘conquer the screen’ in picture palaces worldwide.5 Charles Masterman, busy setting up his literary propaganda operation at Wellington House, argued that film should also be exploited as an international propaganda medium. But he came up against a barrier. Thanks to their sense of contempt for the cinema, his peers were unable to comprehend that this trivial form of amusement might have anything to do with the serious business of winning the war.

  However, when it wanted to, the cinema trade could act as an effective lobby. Joseph Brooke Wilkinson, secretary both of the Kinematograph Manufacturers’ Association and the British Board of Film Censors, was deputed by the Topical companies in the spring of 1915 to negotiate with the War Office on their behalf. Brooke Wilkinson was from Manchester, where after leaving technical college he had worked in a firm of photographic chemists. He came to London just before the turn of the century and was spotted by Cecil Hepworth, one of the pioneers of the British film industry. Wilkinson was a dapper little man with endless patience and energy, and both of these qualities were called upon in his negotiations with the War Office. Fortunately, it seemed that the initial hostility of the military authorities was beginning to change. After arguing the case for several months, Brooke Wilkinson persuaded the War Office to allow film cameramen to visit the Western Front as long as the army had control of the material shot, in case the images gave away vital information to the enemy. The authorities also wanted the cinema industry to donate to military charities a share of the profits made by screening war films. The industry was reluctant to agree at first, but eventually gave in and conceded the concept of profit participation. It was agreed that only a small number of film cameramen would be allowed to visit the front and that the footage they took would be shared or ‘pooled’ by all the Topical news companies. A War Office Topical Film Committee was formed to supervise the whole operation. After months of negotiations, the first two cameramen finally set off for the front on 2 November 1915. They were Edward ‘Teddy’ Tong of Jury’s Imperial Pictures and Geoffrey Malins of Gaumont. In the next year they would bring about a revolution in British film propaganda.

  While these negotiations took place, Masterman was also at work, pushing as it were from the inside. In the summer of 1915 he formed within Wellington House a Cinema Committee consisting of T. Welsh of Gaumont, Charles Urban, a producer of factual films, and William Jury, a prominent cinema distributor, along with the ubiquitous Brooke Wilkinson. Masterman managed to convince the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Arthur Balfour, that German propaganda films were having it all their own way and that the Royal Navy ought also to be seen on cinema screens in Britain and around the world. Balfour presented the case to Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet, stating rather contemptuously that because film ‘required no reading” and ‘threw no strain upon the spectators’ powers of realisation’ it had the ability to reach ‘the intelligence of the least intelligent’. Although he said he personally hated the cinema, Balfour argued that ‘the reality and magnitude of the Fleet’ should be shown to audiences in Britain, France and Russia, as well as in America.6 Even though he probably shared the same disdain for moving pictures, Jellicoe agreed that a group of cameraman could visit the Fleet in Scotland. The result was Britain Prepared, the first ever official British propaganda documentary.

  The producer of the film was to be Charles Urban. He was a pushy young American from Ohio who had originally come to Britain in 1897 as a salesman to sort out an American-owned company that dabbled in cinema distribution. He became fascinated with film and settled in Britain and so enjoyed mixing with British high society that he bought a large country estate where he raised orchids and kept birds. In 1903 he formed his own company, the Charles Urban Trading Company. Although, because of their entertainment value, early films had prospered in the music hall and the fairground, Urban’s passionate mission was to use film to educate, inform and show audiences a new perspective on the world. He produced some of the first scientific and medical films, his cameramen pioneering the use of micro-photography and stop-motion effects to record sequences such as a bud opening into a blossom. Audiences were stunned. He sold short films of the Russo-Japanese War and the Balkan wars, while his operators travelled to Africa, Asia and the Far East, bringing back hours of material which was edited into short travel and adventure films. The motto of his company was ‘We Put the World Before You’.7

  Urban’s assistant, George Albert Smith, developed for him the first ever natural film colour system, called Kinemacolor. It became a sensation before the war. In addition to shooting bird films in colour at the aviary on his own estate, he made a spectacular colour film of the visit of the King and Queen to India in 1911 and of the dazzling Delhi Durbar, at which thousands of Indian dignitaries gathered to pay homage to the British sovereign. Screenings of the Durbar film featured a lecturer reading a narration and an orchestra playing a specially written accompaniment, and soon became the talk of the town. By the First World War Urban was a leading figure in the British film business, running what today would be called an independent factual production company with a big, plush office in Wardour Street, Soho.

  With his go-getting, no-nonsense attitude, Urban was appalled when the War Office initially prohibited filming at the front. He worked closely with Masterman to persuade the Admi
ralty to lift their ban on filming with the navy, and as soon as permission finally came through he went with three cameramen to Scapa Flow in the Orkneys to film the fleet on exercises.

  The small film crew were put up on HMS Queen Elizabeth, one of the newest battleships in the Royal Navy. Right from the start, Urban was horrified by the behaviour of his navy ‘minders’. He was allowed to film nothing without their approval and they proved to be supremely cautious. Whenever a glimpse of shoreline in the background of a shot might allow a viewer to identify where the fleet had assembled, a naval officer put his hand over the lens or simply stopped the cameraman from operating the camera. Urban was furious but somehow held his temper. Finally he secured a meeting on his flagship with Admiral Jellicoe, a man of whom he was greatly in awe; ‘When you caught his eye you realised that here was a man,’ Urban wrote later.8 The meeting went well, and Jellicoe agreed that Urban and his team must carry on and were to be given full support.

  Still there were difficulties. Urban was keen to film the great fifteen-inch heavy guns of the battleship firing broadside, but when they opened fire the blast was such that the camera tripod lifted several inches into the air and the shot was ruined. Urban’s cameramen were eventually allowed to board a sister ship, from which he was able to film the heavy guns firing from a safe distance. They also managed to film destroyers on patrol and the firing of a torpedo, much of the footage being taken in Kinemacolor. Even when the material was sent back to London for developing, however, the navy were still nervous and insisted on having a representative present throughout to ensure that extra copies were not made. They were also obsessed that ‘foreign’ technicians should not be able to see any of the footage before it had been viewed and approved by the naval censor.